Mass balance of polar ice sheets.

• Published in: Science
• Main Authors: Rignot, E, Thomas, RH
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: eScholarship, University of California 2002
• Subjects: Amundsen Sea; Antarctic; Antarctic Peninsula; East Antarctic Ice Sheet; Greenland; The Antarctic; West Antarctic Ice Sheet; West Antarctica; Antarc*; Antarctica; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/8qp1n27c

Recent advances in the determination of the mass balance of polar ice sheets show that the Greenland Ice Sheet is losing mass by near-coastal thinning, and that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, with thickening in the west and thinning in the north, is probably thinning overall. The mass imbalance of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is likely to be small, but even its sign cannot yet be determined. Large sectors of ice in southeast Greenland, the Amundsen Sea Embayment of West Antarctica, and the Antarctic Peninsula are changing quite rapidly as a result of processes not yet understood.